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Writer's pictureDave Goble

39 Just Like That

Updated: Mar 26

Tuesday, May12th.


Tommy Cooper, for my money one of THE great comedians, was born in Caerphilly, Wales in 1921. When he wasn’t hanging out in his seaside retreat in Eastbourne, he lived in this house in Chiswick, at No. 51 Barrowgate Road, from 1955 until the day he died in 1984 while performing live on TV at Her Majesty’s Theatre, aged just 63.


He moved to Exeter aged three when his Dad changed jobs, hence the West Country accent. He received a magic set from his auntie for his eighth birthday, and spent many hours perfecting the tricks. Funny when you think that later in life he probably spent as much time learning and practising how not to do them too.

In 1940 he was called up as a trooper in the Royal Horse Guards, serving for seven years. He joined Montgomery’s Desert Rats in Egypt, and became a member of a Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes, (NAAFI), entertainment party, developing an act around his magic tricks, interspersed with comedy. One evening in Cairo, during a sketch in which he was supposed to be in a costume that required a pith helmet, having forgotten the prop Cooper reached out and borrowed a fez from a passing waiter. It got huge laughs, and he wore a fez when performing after that, the prop later being described as "an icon of 20th-century comedy".

He liked his drink, and he liked a cigarette. He and his wife reportedly enjoyed a “robust” relationship. One of his favourite locals was The Old Queens Head, (now The Smokehouse Bar and Restaurant), on Sutton Lane in Chiswick, conveniently about a hundred yards from his front door.


I think his story is pretty well known, so I’ll shift focus on to some more obscure stuff.


For a few years in the early eighties I shared a five-bedroom flat with four friends, including Mick Gorton and Jennifer Johns. Unbeknown to me (us) at the time, eleven doors down the road was No. 51 (our address was No. 73 Barrowgate Road, Chiswick).

Our famous neighbour was rarely seen by any of us, though I do have one enduring memory of him. I was returning to the flat in the small hours one morning when I spotted what looked like a figure slumped on his back in the dark, straddling a low, brick front garden wall next to the pavement. He was sleeping / out for the count. It was dark, but helped by the street light I could see it was Tommy Cooper. He was a tall, (6’ 4”), and big man, even lying down.


The wall wasn’t outside his house, and you’ll notice from the photograph of said house that even someone as tall as him wouldn’t have managed to straddle it, so now the mind inevitably starts to wander. My guess is that on getting home that night from the pub he’d found himself locked out. Possibly he considered climbing or sleeping on his own wall, but dismissed the idea in favour of something less challenging and dangerous. I don’t recall which house it was, but the wall he settled on was about three feet high and located between his house and our flat. The weather mild and dry, so I left him to it.


To close I was going to cut-and-paste a few of his jokes here, but for me much of the magic, (pardon the pun), was visual - in the delivery, the demeanour and the expressions, so instead I thought I’d offer this short clip (under a minute):



No. 51. Plaque quite high on the right, in the shade unfortunately. Note height of wall.


The plaque.


No. 73 (we had the middle floor of this lovely flat).


Red arrow is No. 51; yellow No. 73; and blue The Old Queens Head.

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